Spooky: How NSA's Surveillance Algorithms See Into Your Life

SmartAboutThings writes "A quite scary talk show with former NSA employees — now whistle blowers — Thomas Drake, Kirk Wiebe, and William Binney reveals that the NSA has algorithms that go through data gathered about us and they can basically 'see into our lives.' And this seems to be going on especially since the Patriot Act has removed the statutory requirement that the government prove a surveillance target under FISA is a non-U.S. citizen and agent of a foreign power." Binney's HOPE keynote has more detail on how the NSA watches people.

Comments

What if we started encrypting more

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in the 90s pgp and widespread up public key crypto were going to be the next thing. Never caught on . But I am sure even the NSA doesn't have to power to decrypt the volume of a fraction of the populations communication if they were to use crypto regularly and even mundane communications

Re:What if we started encrypting more

[houstonbofh]

They do not even read it now. Just warehouse it for later. So with encryption, they would do the same, and only crack it to show what a bad person you were when they needed to.

Re:What if we started encrypting more

[houstonbofh]

Also, that would only hide what your were saying, and not who you were saying it to. Those connections are the more important data.

Aurora suspect.

[Albert Schueller]

The Aurora shooting suspect left a digital path a mile wide indicating he was up to something nefarious. NSA didn't see that coming. I don't thing their reach is as pervasive as people fear.

Re:I wish Gore had won.

[houstonbofh]

You mean like Obama ended war? How about how he vetoed unlimited detention? When will people get that there is no substantive difference between the two parties? The slogans may be different, but the actions are the same.

Re:I know I'm safe

[Anonymous Coward]

... because I post as Anonymous Coward.

You think so. But we already have determined from your posting time, choice of words, habit to begin the text in the title, and habit of posting on Slashdot, together with some general internet traffic analysis and certain correlations the nature of which are top secret, who you are and where you live, and have increased your threat score (the number which tells how much of a threat we consider you to be) to reflect this activity of yours (people who think they are safe are of course more dangerous).

Re:I wish Gore had won.

[dkleinsc]

Tell that to gay people in the military. Or to people getting unemployment that otherwise wouldn't. Or the people who got a job due to the stimulus package. Or the people who have health insurance now that couldn't get it a couple of years ago.

I get that the differences between Democrats and Republicans are not as big as their similarities (FWIW, I'm voting for a third party candidate this year), but there are some real differences that change people's lives for better or worse.